Mr. Avanessians is the global head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s (GSAM) quantitative, rules-based, and indexing businesses. Prior to joining GSAM in 2011, he served as head of Strats, a global group responsible for the application of mathematical, quantitative, and algorithmic approaches to revenue activities in the Securities, Investment Management, and Investment Banking Divisions. In more than two decades in this role, he was instrumental in developing the teams, practices, and platform (SecDb), which collectively drive the commercial application of analytics across most of the firm’s activities today. Mr. Avanessians also served on the Securities Division Executive Committee from 2003 to 2011. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1985 as a foreign exchange strategist and became a partner in 1994.

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Avanessians was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill.

He earned a B.S.E.E. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and an M.S. from Columbia University in 1983.